TL;DR: Stop chasing leads and start building trust. The most loyal customers aren’t captured; they are earned by generously helping them long before they ever pay you.
You’ve seen the ads. “Explode your sales with this funnel!” “10x your leads by tomorrow!” The world of marketing feels like a frantic race to grab attention and squeeze out a sale as fast as possible. It’s loud, it’s complicated, and for many business owners, it’s exhausting.
But what if the best strategy wasn’t a race at all? What if it was more like planting a garden? What if the most profitable thing you could do was to… wait?
It sounds crazy, but this is the core of a powerful idea Simon Squibb, a founder of 19 companies, calls the number one reason businesses succeed: delayed gratification.
The Problem with “Right Now” Marketing
Modern marketing often pushes us to think in terms of transactions. We build complex systems to capture an email, nurture a lead, and convert a sale. We A/B test every button and track every click, hoping to optimize our way to success.
While these tools have their place, an over-reliance on them can create two big problems:
- It burns you out: Constantly managing these systems and chasing short-term results is tiring. It pulls you away from what you do best—running your business and serving your people.
- It feels transactional to your customers: People can feel when they’re being pushed through a funnel. They know when they are just a number on a dashboard. This approach might get you a quick sale, but it rarely builds a deep, lasting relationship.
A More Natural Path: Plant Seeds, Don’t Hunt
Delayed gratification is a simple shift in mindset: Give. Don’t take.
Instead of asking, “How can I get this person to buy from me?”, you ask, “How can I genuinely help this person right now, regardless of whether they ever buy from me?”
Think of it this way. Aggressive marketing is like hunting. You chase, you capture, and the interaction is over. Generous marketing is like farming. You prepare the soil, you plant seeds of trust and expertise, you water them with consistent value, and you build an ecosystem where people want to be. The harvest comes, but it comes as a natural result of your care and patience.
How Trust Becomes Your Best Sales Team
When you operate from a place of generosity, something magical happens. You stop being a vendor and become an authority and a trusted guide.
- You build a reputation: When you freely share your best advice, people see you as an expert who genuinely cares about their success.
- You create a community: People are drawn to generosity. They will talk about you, share your content, and recommend you to others because you helped them without asking for anything.
- The sale becomes a conversation: By the time a person is ready to buy, they already know, like, and trust you. There’s no hard sell. The conversation is simply, “You’ve already helped me so much. I think I’m ready to take the next step.”
This is how you build a brand that lasts. It’s not a trick or a tactic. It’s a sustainable, human way to grow.
How to Start Giving Value Away Today
This isn’t about giving away your products or services for free indefinitely. It’s about being generous with your knowledge and help. Here are a few simple ways to start:
- Answer questions publicly. Spend 15 minutes a day on LinkedIn, in Facebook groups, or on forums where your ideal clients hang out. Don’t pitch your services. Just find questions and provide thoughtful, helpful answers.
- Create a genuinely useful resource. Write a simple checklist, a “how-to” guide, or a short video that solves one specific, annoying problem for your audience. Then, give it away freely, with no email signup required.
- Offer a “5-Minute Fix.” When someone reaches out, offer to solve one tiny part of their problem on a quick, free call. Show them you can help by actually helping. This small act of goodwill builds more trust than a dozen sales emails.
Building a business this way isn’t fast, but it is strong. It creates a foundation of trust that can’t be easily broken or copied by your competitors. It aligns your marketing with a true spirit of service.
So, take a deep breath. You can step off the hamster wheel of frantic, short-term marketing.
Your path to growth isn’t in a complex funnel. It’s in your next generous act.
What is one piece of valuable advice you can give to a potential client this week, for free? Share your idea in the comments below.